System and method for dynamic asr based on social media

ABSTRACT

System and method to adjust an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, the method including: receiving social network information from a social network; data mining the social network information to extract one or more characteristics; inferring a trend from the extracted one or more characteristics; and adjusting the ASR engine based upon the inferred trend. Embodiments of the method may further include: receiving a speech signal from a user; and recognizing the speech signal by use of the adjusted ASR engine. Further embodiments of the method may further include: producing a list of candidate matching words; and ranking the list of candidate matching words by use of the inferred trend.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Invention

Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to dynamicautomatic speech recognition (ASR), and, in particular, to a system andmethod for dynamically altering ASR operation based upon informationmined from social networking sources.

2. Description of Related Art

Contact centers generally exchange information with consumers throughdirected contacts. Directed contacts consist of emails, phone calls, orother forms of communication that are directed to the contact center orthe consumer. However, many people today, exchange information orinteract through non-direct methods. Non-direct communications requireusers to post communications to third party sites or forums, but not todirect those communications to a specific person or organization.Non-direct communication methods include social media, which may includewebsites, networks, blogs, micro-blogs, RSS feeds, social media websites(such as, Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.), and other typesof social media.

Consumers are finding it useful to ask their questions, complain aboutservice, and complement companies in the public forum of social media.Social media is often a ^(“)canary in a coal mine” (i.e., an earlyindicator) for possible service-affecting events because social mediausers typically express themselves on social media channels before usingtraditional channels like voice. The addition of social media to validcontact center channels increases the overall coverage required bytoday's contact center. However, contact centers have limited amounts ofresources. The burden of keeping other, traditionally static, contactcenter self service channels current, efficient, and useful becomes adifficult problem. Therefore, traditional contact centers do not reactto trends in social media that duplicate trends from other channels likevoice dialog via interactive voice response (“IVR”). Delays inaddressing a customer crisis results in lost time and money for abusiness.

Therefore, a need exists to adapt speech grammars recognized by contactcenter channels, based on real-time trending events detected from socialmedia, in order to provide high customer satisfaction, efficient callhandling, and minimizing the burden on today's contact center resources.

SUMMARY

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a systemand method to adjust an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, themethod including: receiving social network information from a socialnetwork; data mining the social network information to extract one ormore characteristics; inferring a trend from the extracted one or morecharacteristics; and adjusting the ASR engine based upon the inferredtrend. Embodiments of the method may further include: receiving a speechsignal from a user; and recognizing the speech signal by use of theadjusted ASR engine. Further embodiments of the method may furtherinclude: producing a list of candidate matching words; and ranking thelist of candidate matching words by use of the inferred trend.

The phrases “at least one”, “one or more”, and “and/or” are open-endedexpressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive in operation. Forexample, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B and C”, “at leastone of A, B, or C”, “one or more of A, B, and C”, “one or more of A, B,or C” and “A, B, and/or C” means A alone, B alone, C alone, A and Btogether, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B and C together.

The term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or more of that entity. Assuch, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more” and “at least one” can beused interchangeably herein. It is also to be noted that the terms“comprising”, “including”, and “having” can be used interchangeably.

The term “automatic” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers toany process or operation done without material human input when theprocess or operation is performed. However, a process or operation canbe automatic, even though performance of the process or operation usesmaterial or immaterial human input, if the input is received beforeperformance of the process or operation. Human input is deemed to bematerial if such input influences how the process or operation will beperformed. Human input that consents to the performance of the processor operation is not deemed to be “material”.

The term “computer-readable medium” as used herein refers to anytangible storage that participates in providing instructions to aprocessor for execution. Such a medium may take many forms, includingbut not limited to, non-volatile media, volatile media, and transmissionmedia. Non-volatile media includes, for example, NVRAM, or magnetic oroptical disks. Volatile media includes dynamic memory, such as mainmemory. Common forms of computer-readable media include, for example, afloppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, or any othermagnetic medium, magneto-optical medium, a CD-ROM, any other opticalmedium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patternsof holes, a RAM, a PROM, and EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, a solid state mediumlike a memory card, any other memory chip or cartridge, or any othermedium from which a computer can read. When the computer-readable mediais configured as a database, it is to be understood that the databasemay be any type of database, such as relational, hierarchical,object-oriented, and/or the like. Accordingly, the invention isconsidered to include a tangible storage medium and prior art-recognizedequivalents and successor media, in which the software implementationsof the present invention are stored.

The terms “determine”, “calculate”, and “compute,” and variationsthereof, as used herein, are used interchangeably and include any typeof methodology, process, mathematical operation, or technique.

The term “module” as used herein refers to any known or later developedhardware, software, firmware, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, orcombination of hardware and software that is capable of performing thefunctionality associated with that element. Also, while the invention isdescribed in terms of exemplary embodiments, it should be appreciatedthat individual aspects of the invention can be separately claimed.

The term “in communication with” as used herein refers to any coupling,connection, or interaction using electrical signals to exchangeinformation or data, using any system, hardware, software, protocol, orformat.

A user context, an extended user context, and/or a user social contextas used herein means information about a user of a social media networkthat can be used to determine a “value” of that user.

The term “social media network” or “social media” is a service providerthat builds online communities of people, who share interests and/oractivities, or who are interested in exploring the interests andactivities of others. Generally, social media are web-based and providea variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instantmessaging services.

The preceding is a simplified summary of embodiments of the disclosureto provide an understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. Thissummary is neither an extensive nor exhaustive overview of thedisclosure and its various embodiments. It is intended neither toidentify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate thescope of the disclosure but to present selected concepts of thedisclosure in a simplified form as an introduction to the more detaileddescription presented below. As will be appreciated, other embodimentsof the disclosure are possible utilizing, alone or in combination, oneor more of the features set forth above or described in detail below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and still further features and advantages of the presentinvention will become apparent upon consideration of the followingdetailed description of embodiments thereof, especially when taken inconjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein like referencenumerals in the various figures are utilized to designate likecomponents, and wherein:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a communication system,operable to interact with persons using a social media network;

FIG. 2A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a social media gateway;

FIG. 2B is a block diagram of an embodiment of a dialog system;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a dialog data structure;

FIG. 4 is a method in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computing environment;and

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computer system.

The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and arenot meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or theclaims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in apermissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather thanthe mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words“include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including but not limitedto. To facilitate understanding, like reference numerals have been used,where possible, to designate like elements common to the figures.Optional portions of the figures may be illustrated using dashed ordotted lines, unless the context of usage indicates otherwise.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Social Media channels are gaining momentum as a platform for deliveringand receiving customer support. Consumers are finding it useful to asktheir questions, complain about service, and complement companies in thepublic forum of Social Media. The addition of Social Media to validcontact center channels increases the overall convergence required bytoday's contact center. The burden of keeping other, traditionallystatic, contact center self service channels current, efficient, anduseful becomes a difficult problem.

Customers benefit from efficient interactive voice response (“IVR”)systems that make the most common menu choices and options easy to findand simple to navigate. This becomes very difficult when deploying astatic system with many options and many levels of menus. Furthermore,the need may arise to move menu items around based on time of day,current events, or trending problems.

Automatic speech recognition (“ASR”) can help with some of thedifficulties of multilevel menu navigation. However, ASR is not perfect.ASR is not 100% accurate in recognizing words/phrases that are known toits vocabulary and it is 100% wrong on words/phrases that are not knownto its vocabulary. Recognizing speech regardless of the speaker is achallenge. When the system is uncertain, choices must be made based onconfidence scores. Real-time data about trending problems may helpdetermine a preferred choice when indicators such as confidence scoresdo not produce a clearly preferred option. An advantage of using socialmedia trends is to expand (or contract) the size of the vocabulary toimprove the likelihood of a correct match when a caller speaks on anunexpected topic that is showing up as a trend on social media. Theadjustments provided by tracking social media trends may includevocabulary expansion (or contraction) and modifying probabilities (e.g.,weights and/or penalties) of existing vocabulary as a reaction toidentified trends. Embodiments may apply a trending “bonus” after speechrecognition to modify the confidence scores, but a disadvantage is thatthis bonus can be applied only for terms that have been recognized, andcannot be applied to new terms not already within the vocabulary of anASR engine. Therefore, adapting contact center channels based onreal-time trending events may be critical to achieving high customersatisfaction, efficient call handling, and minimizing the burden ontoday's contact center resources. For example, delays in addressing acustomer crisis may result in lost time and money for the business.

The disclosure will be illustrated below in conjunction with anexemplary communication system. Although well suited for use with, e.g.,a system using a server(s) and/or database(s), the disclosure is notlimited to use with any particular type of communication system orconfiguration of system elements. Those skilled in the art willrecognize that the disclosed techniques may be used in any communicationapplication in which it is desirable to utilize social media sources todynamically alter ASR operation.

The exemplary systems and methods of this disclosure will also bedescribed in relation to software, modules, and associated hardware.However, to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure, thefollowing description omits well-known structures, components anddevices that may be shown in block diagram form, are well known, or areotherwise summarized.

In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are setforth in order to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments orother examples described herein. In some instances, well-known methods,procedures, components and circuits have not been described in detail,so as to not obscure the following description. Further, the examplesdisclosed are for exemplary purposes only and other examples may beemployed in lieu of, or in combination with, the examples disclosed. Itshould also be noted the examples presented herein should not beconstrued as limiting of the scope of embodiments of the presentinvention, as other equally effective examples are possible and likely.

As used herein in connection with embodiments of the present invention,the term “contact” (as in “customer contact”) refers to a communicationfrom a customer or potential customer, in which a request is presentedto a contact center. The request can be by way of any communicationmedium such as, but not limited to, a telephone call, e-mail, instantmessage, web chat, and the like.

As used herein in connection with embodiments of the present invention,the term “customer” denotes a party external to the contact centerirrespective of whether or not that party is a “customer” in the senseof having a commercial relationship with the contact center or with abusiness represented by the contact center. “Customer” is thusshorthand, as used in contact center terminology, for the other party toa contact or a communications session.

As used herein in connection with embodiments of the present invention,the term “empower” refers to an ability by a party (e.g., a customer) toexercise rights, abilities, functions and so forth, which had beenformerly and exclusively reserved for exercise by another party (e.g., aservice agent).

The terms “switch,” “server,” “contact center server,” or “contactcenter computer server” as used herein should be understood to include aPrivate Branch Exchange (“PBX”), an ACD, an enterprise switch, or othertype of telecommunications system switch or server, as well as othertypes of processor-based communication control devices such as, but notlimited to, media servers, computers, adjuncts, and the like.

As used herein, the term “module” refers generally to a logical sequenceor association of steps, processes or components. For example, asoftware module may comprise a set of associated routines or subroutineswithin a computer program. Alternatively, a module may comprise asubstantially self-contained hardware device. A module may also comprisea logical set of processes irrespective of any software or hardwareimplementation.

As used herein, the term “gateway” may generally comprise any devicethat sends and receives data between devices. For example, a gateway maycomprise routers, switches, bridges, firewalls, other network elements,and the like, any and combination thereof.

As used herein, the term “transmitter” may generally comprise anydevice, circuit, or apparatus capable of transmitting an electricalsignal.

The term “computer-readable medium” as used herein refers to anytangible storage and/or transmission medium that participates in storingand/or providing instructions to a processor for execution. Such amedium may take many forms, including but not limited to, non-volatilemedia, volatile media, and transmission media. Non-volatile mediaincludes, for example, NVRAM, or magnetic or optical disks. Volatilemedia includes dynamic memory, such as main memory. Common forms ofcomputer-readable media include, for example, a floppy disk, a flexibledisk, hard disk, magnetic tape, or any other magnetic medium,magneto-optical medium, a CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards,paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, RAM, PROM,EPROM, FLASH-EPROM, solid state medium like a memory card, any othermemory chip or cartridge, a carrier wave as described hereinafter, orany other medium from which a computer can read. A digital fileattachment to e-mail or other self-contained information archive or setof archives is considered a distribution medium equivalent to a tangiblestorage medium. When the computer-readable media is configured as adatabase, it is to be understood that the database may be any type ofdatabase, such as relational, hierarchical, object-oriented, and/or thelike. Accordingly, the disclosure is considered to include a tangiblestorage medium or distribution medium and prior art-recognizedequivalents and successor media, in which the software implementationsof the present disclosure are stored.

The ensuing description provides embodiments only, and is not intendedto limit the scope, applicability, or configuration of the claims.Rather, the ensuing description will provide those skilled in the artwith an enabling description for implementing the embodiments. Variouschanges may be made in the function and arrangement of elements of theembodiment without departing from the spirit and scope of the appendedclaims.

A communication system 100, for interacting with persons using socialmedia is shown in FIG. 1. The communication system 100 can include acontact center 102, a network 108, and one or more types of social medianetworks or systems, such as social media network 1 112, social medianetwork 2 114, and/or social media network 3 116. Social media networks112, 114, and/or 116 can be any social media including, but not limitedto, networks, websites, or computer enabled systems. For example, asocial media network may be MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In,Spoke, or other similar computer enabled systems or websites. Thecommunication system 100 can communicate with more or fewer social medianetworks 112, 114, and/or 116 than those shown FIG. 1, as represented byellipses 118.

The network 108 can be any network or system operable to allowcommunication between the contact center 102 and the one or more socialmedia networks 112, 114, and/or 116. The network 108 can represent anycommunication system, whether wired or wireless, using any protocoland/or format. The network 108 provides communication capability for thecontact center 102 to communicate with websites or systems correspondingto the one or more social media networks 112, 114, and/or 116. However,the network 108 can represent two or more networks, where each networkis a different communication system using different communicationprotocols and/or formats and/or different hardware and software. Forexample, network 108 can be a wide area network, local area network, theInternet, a cellular telephone network, or some other type ofcommunication system. The network 108 may be as described in conjunctionwith FIGS. 5 and 6.

A contact center 102 can be a system that can communicate with one ormore persons that use social media networking sites 112, 114, and/or116. The contact center 102 can be hardware, software, or a combinationof hardware and software. The contact center 102 can be executed by oneor more servers or computer systems, as described in conjunction withFIGS. 5 and 6. The contact center 102 can include all systems, whetherhardware or software, that allow the contact center 102 to receive,service, and respond to directed and non-directed contacts. For examplethe contact center 102 can include the telephone or email system, aninterface to human agents, systems to allow human agents to service andrespond to received contacts, and one or more systems operable toanalyze and improve the function of agent interaction.

The contact center 102 may include a dialog system 104 and a socialmedia gateway 106. While the dialog system 104 and the social mediagateway 106 are shown as being a part of the contact system 102, inother embodiments, the dialog system 104 and/or the social media gateway106 are separate systems or functions executed separately from thecontact center 102 and/or executed by a third party. The dialog system104 may process and receive messages. The social media gateway 106 canreceive and translate messages from the one or more social medianetworks 112, 114, and/or 116. An embodiment of the dialog system 104 isdescribed in conjunction with FIG. 2B. An embodiment of the social mediagateway 106 is described in conjunction with FIG. 2A.

The contact center 102 may also communicate with one or morecommunication devices 110. The communication devices 110 can represent acustomer's or user's cell phone, email system, personal digitalassistant, laptop computer, or other device that allows the contactcenter 102 to interact with the customer. The contact center 102 canmodify a non-direct contact, from a social media network 112, 114,and/or 116, into a directed contact by sending a response messagedirectly to a customer's communication device 110.

An embodiment of the social media gateway 106 is shown in FIG. 2A. Thesocial media gateway 106 can include one or more components which mayinclude hardware, software, or combination of hardware and software. Thesocial media gateway 106 can be executed by a computer system, such asthose described in conjunction with FIG. 5. However, in otherembodiments, the components described in conjunction with FIG. 2A arelogic circuits or other specially-designed hardware that are embodied ina field programmable gate array (FPGA) application specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), or other hardware.

Herein, the social media gateway 106 can include one or more contentfilters 202 a, 202 b, and/or 202 c. A content filter 202 can receive allof the messages for the contact center 102 from a social media network112, 114, and/or 116 and eliminate or delete those messages that do notrequire a response. For example, a message between two friends on aFacebook page, if not pertaining to a product or a service of thecompany operating the contact center 102, may not need a response. Assuch, the content filter 202 can filter out or delete the non-suitablemessage from the messages that are received by the social media networkapplication programming interface (API) 1 204 a, social media networkAPI 2 204 b, and/or social media network API 3 204 c. With the contentfilter 202, the social media network API 204 only needs to translatethose messages that should be received by the dialog system 104.Translation typically requires the conversion of the message into adifferent format.

The content filter 202 is provided with one or more heuristics forfilter rules from a filter database (not shown). These filter rules canbe created by the external customer or internal user (e.g. agent oradministrator) of the communication system 100. Thus, the user orcustomer of the communication system 100 can customize the filtering ofmessages from social media networks 112, 114, and/or 116. Further,different rules may be applied to different social media networks 112,114, and/or 116, as some social media networks 112, 114, and/or 116 mayhave different types of messages or postings than other types of socialmedia networks 112, 114, and/or 116. While the content filter 202 isshown as part of the social media gateway 106, it is to be appreciatedthat the content filter 202 may be a part of the social media networkAPI 204. The content filter 202 may correspond to query terms used bythe social media network API 204. The content filter 202 or query termsare an argument to the social media network API 204 call.

The social media network API 204 can be an application that the socialmedia network 112, 114, and/or 116 provides to access the social medianetwork 112, 114, and/or 116. Thus, the social media network API 204 iscalled and connects the social media gateway 106 to the social medianetwork 112, 114, and/or 116. Any suitable filter criteria may beemployed for social media API 204. Examples of filter criteria includepositive content of positive the source of posting, an address field,destination or recipient address fields, a time stamp field, a subjectmatter field, and a message body field. For example, a type ofsearchable content can be name of the business enterprise running oremploying the contact center 102 and/or the products or services of theenterprise.

The social media gateway 106 can include one or more social medianetwork APIs 204. As shown in FIG. 2A, the social media gateway 106 mayinclude a social media network API 204 for each social media network112, 114, and/or 116. As such, the social media gateway 106 can interactwith each social media network 112, 114, and/or 116 in the particular(often unique) format or protocol used by the social media network 112,114, and/or 116. Further, when new social media networks are created,the social media gateway 106 can be easily expanded to interact withthose social media networks by adding another social media network API204. Where social media networks 112 are more standardized, or usesubstantially similar formats or protocols, a single social medianetwork API 204 can be shared by multiple social media networks 112-116.

The social media network API 204 can receive messages from and sendmessages to the social media network 112, 114, and/or 116. The socialmedia network API 204 can translate a message received from a socialmedia network 112, 114, and/or 116 and send the translated message to amessage filter 206. The social media network API 204 can translate thereceived message into a standard formatted file. For example, thetranslated message may be represented by an extensible mark-up language(XML) file or other file having a general format. As such, each specificand particular social media network message can be translated into astandard format for use by the dialog system 104. Further, the socialmedia network API 204 can receive a generally or standard formatresponse message, from the dialog system 104, and translate thatresponse into a particularly or specifically formatted response messagethat can be posted to the corresponding social media network 112, 114,and/or 116.

Messages to the contact center 102 are addressed to the contact center102. For example, a customer may become a “friend” of the contact center102 on a social media network 114, such as Facebook. The customer maythen address a message to the contact center 102 on Facebook. Thisnon-direct contact is a message that is not sent directly to the contactcenter 102 but to the contact center's Facebook page. In otherembodiments, the contact center 102 receives messages not addressed tothe contact center 102. For example, the contact center 102 can receivetweets from Twitter that are “broadcast” rather than addressed to thecontact center 102. The contact center 102 may also search for messagesor content on the social media networks 112, 114, and/or 116. Exemplarysearch criteria include customer name, customer profession, customerhome address, customer business address, customer employer name,customer educational or professional background, customer hobby,personal or business interests, customer family profile, and the like.Thus, the social media gateway 106 of the contact center 102 can query,gather, or connect to a live feed of data from a social media network112, 114, and/or 116 and then apply a filter to the indirectinformation.

Further, the social media network API 204 can also retrieve user contextor other extended information from the social media networks 112, 114,and/or 116. User context or other extended information can includehistorical posts, historical tweets, or other historical communicationsthat a user may have received or sent. Further, user context or otherextended information can include, but is not limited to, accountinformation for a user, the user's followers or friends, information onwhere historical messages were posted (e.g., geo-location, time/date,what type of device, etc.), trending analysis that the social medianetwork 112, 114, and/or 116 might provide the user, etc. Thus, thesocial media network API 204 can retrieve information that is associatedwith a user and a social media network 112, 114, and/or 116 but notnecessarily a part of a current message. The social media network API204 is a gatherer of data, which can be used to determine a value forthe user of the social media networks 112, 114, and/or 116.

The translated messages from the social media network API 204 can bereceived by a message filter 206. A message filter 206 can perform someor all of the functions of the content filter 202 and eliminate messagesbefore being sent to the dialog system 104. However, in otherembodiments, the message filter 206 eliminates information from withinthe messages before the redacted messages are sent to the dialog system104. For example, a message from a social media network 112 may havethree or four interactions between two parties not associated with thecontact center 102. Only one of the several postings may be pertinent tothe dialog system 104. As such, the message filter 206 can eliminate ordelete at least a portion of the other messages for the dialog system104. Thus, the dialog system 104 receives a message where some of thecontent of the message has been deleted. The message filter 206 canretrieve heuristics or filter rules from a filter database (not shown),similar to the content filter 202. A substantial difference between thecontent and message filters 202 and 206 is that the content filter 202is specific to a particular message format associated with acorresponding social media network 112, 114, and/or 116, while themessage filter 206 is applied to a standardized or universal format andis therefore common to multiple social media networks 112, 114, and/or116. One skilled in the art will understand the type of rules that maybe used to filter information from messages such that only pertinentquestions, facts, requests, or information is sent to the dialog system104.

A message aggregator 208 may also be included with the social mediagateway 106. A message aggregator 208 can, in contrast to the messagefilter 206, combine two or more messages into a packet or grouping thatis sent to the dialog system 104. Therefore, the message aggregator 208can interrelate or combine messages based on information within themessages. For example, two messages may be combined based on any of themessage fields referenced above, such as the person that posted themessage, the subject, the request or question asked, the person themessage was sent to, or other information that may be pertinent to thedialog system 104. Thus, the dialog system 104 may be able to respondconcurrently to two or more messages based on a grouping provided by themessage aggregator 208. Regardless of whether the messages areaggregated, each message or grouping of messages can be sent from thesocial media gateway 106 to the dialog system 104.

The social media gateway 106 can also send responses back to the socialmedia networks 112, 114, and/or 116. A response from an agent in thecontact center 102 can be sent to the social media gateway 106. Theresponse may be in a general format and translated. The translatedresponse may then be posted to the appropriate social media network 112,114, and/or 116 by the social media gateway 106. In other embodiments,the agent may post the response directly to the social media network112, 114, and/or 116 without sending the response to the social mediagateway 106.

An embodiment of the dialog system 104 is shown in FIG. 2B. The dialogsystem 104 can include one or more components which may be hardware,software, or a combination of hardware and software. The dialog system104 can be executed by a computer system such as those described inconjunction with FIGS. 5 and 6. However, in other embodiments, thecomponents described in conjunction with FIG. 2B, are logic circuits orother specially-designed hardware that are embodied in a FPGA or ASIC.The components contained within the dialog system 104 can include adialog core 210 that is communication with a message history database222, an agent interface 224, and a heuristic rules and dialogs database218. Further, the heuristic rules and dialogs database 218 can be incommunication with a dialog creator 220.

The dialog core 210 can include one or more sub-components. For example,the dialog core 210 can include a trend analysis component 212, a textprocessing component 214, and an analysis tools component 216. Thesecomponents, similar to the components for the dialog system 104, can behardware, software, or combination of hardware and software. The dialogcore 210 may step through the states of a dialog data structure. Adialog data structure can include a set of inputs and associated actionsthat can be taken which allow for the automatic and structured responseto social media requests or messages. For example, if a user asks for amanual, the input of the text word “manual” can cause the dialog system104 in accordance with a dialog data structure, to send informationabout one or more manuals. In turn, the receiver of the response mayrespond, in kind, with the selection of a certain user manual. In whichcase, the dialog data structure may then instruct the dialog core tosend the user to a website where the user can retrieve an electronicversion of the manual. As such, the dialog data structure provides ascript a dialog that allows the dialog core 210 to automate theinteraction between the contact center 102 and a person. This automationeliminates the need for agent involvement, in some situations, and makesthe contact center 102 more efficient and more effective. Further, theautomation expands the contact center's ability to answer numerousmessages from the plethora of postings on the numerous social medianetworks 112, 114, and/or 116.

The dialog creator 220 will create a dialog data structure 300 thatincludes instructions for various states for each social media messagethat comes into the contact center 102. The first instruction might beto send the social media message to the trend analysis component 212,then to the text processing component 214, and then execute a query of aCustomer Relationship Management (“CRM”) database 232 (to determine ifthis user has an existing order). A CRM database 232 can be a databaseas described in conjunction with FIGS. 5 and 6 and can store informationabout customers or other data related to customer relations. Finally thedialog data structure 220 might decide that the social media messageshould be sent to a human agent 228 for processing. The instructions ornode transitions are executed in the dialog core 210 and make use ofmany different components that the dialog creator 220 combines in anyway the user desires to handle the social media messages. The dialogcore 210 can make use of the trend analysis component 212, textprocessing component 214, or other systems. The dialog core 210 may alsointerface with a CRM system and/or database 232, external databases,social media user information (e.g., followers, friends, post history,etc. from the social media site), or other systems.

The trend analysis component 212 is operable to analyze trends thatoccur between two or more messages received by the social media networks112, 114, and/or 116. The two messages can be from different socialmedia networks, so that the trend analysis component 212 can identifytrends across several different social media networks 112, 114, and/or116. Trends can include multiple occurrences of the same word or phrase,multiple occurrences of a customer identity, product name or service, ormultiple occurrences of some other information that might indicate atrend. Further, the trend analysis component 212 may be able to identifyescalations in the occurrences of particular text, identities, or otherinformation, or may identify multiple occurrences over a period of time.The trend analysis component 212 may also be able to apply one or moredifferent algorithms to occurrences of information within the socialmedia networks 112, 114, and/or 116. For example, the trend analysiscomponent 212 can match the number of occurrences of a phrase or wordover a period of time and apply analysis to determine if the occurrencesare increasing or decreasing over the period of time.

The text processing component 214 is operable to analyze text of one ormore messages from social media networks 112, 114, or 116. Some possiblemethods for text processing can include Regular Expression, LatentSemantic Indexing (LSI), text part of speech tagging, text clustering,N-Gram document analysis, etc. The text processing rules or models maybe stored in and/or retrieved from a text processing rules database 230.The text processing rules database 230 can be a database as described inconjunction with FIG. 5 that stores rules or models used by the textprocessing component 214.

The text processing component 214 can identify one or more occurrencesof a particular text, such as using one or more of the message fieldsreferenced above, in order to associate that social media message withone or more dialogs data structures in the heuristic rules and dialogdatabase 218. For example, the text processing component 214 can lookfor the word “manual,” in the social media message. If the word “manual”is found, the text processing component 214 may retrieve a dialog datastructure from the heuristic rules and dialogs database 218 and, as thedialog data structure instructs, communicate with the customer about oneor more owner's manuals, repair manuals, or other types of manuals. Inanother example, if the social media message includes the words, “buy”,“sell”, “price, “discount” or other types of words that may indicate theuser or customer wishes to buy a product, the text processing component214 can retrieve one or more dialog data structures from the heuristicrules and dialogs database 218 that can provide instruction to assistthe customer in purchasing products or services from the enterprise.

The analysis tools component 216 is operable to analyze responsemessages received back from an agent interface 224. In analyzing theagent's responses, the analysis tools component 216 can determine if thedialog data structures 300 (FIG. 3) originally retrieved by the textprocessing component 214 met the needs of the customer. In the analysis,the agent 228 may enter one or more items of information, for theanalysis tools component 216, about the response and about how theresponse matched with the dialog data structures 300. The analysis toolscomponent 216 can review the response and determine if it was similar tothe response provided by the dialog data structure 300 (FIG. 3). Thus,the analysis tools component 216 can provide information to the dialogcore 210 or the dialog creator 220 to improve the dialog data structures300 (FIG. 3) that are included in the heuristic rules and dialogsdatabase 218.

The message history database 222 can be any database or data storagesystem as described in conjunction with FIGS. 5 and 6. Thus, the messagehistory database 222 can store data in data fields, objects, or otherdata structures to allow other systems to retrieve that information at alater time. The message history database 222 can store previous messagesor information about previous messages. Thus, for example, if the trendanalysis component 212 is analyzing several messages over a period oftime, the trend analysis component 212 can retrieve information aboutprevious messages associated with the current analysis from the messagehistory database 222. As such, the trend analysis component 212 canbetter detect trends occurring at the social media networks 112, 114,and/or 116. The data stored by the message history database 222 caninclude the entire message or only a portion of the message, and in somecircumstances, include metadata about the message(s).

The heuristic rules and dialogs database 218 can be any type of databaseor data storage system as described in conjunction with FIGS. 5 and 6.The heuristic rules and dialogs database 218 can store information indata fields, data objects, and/or any other data structures. An exampleof information stored within the heuristic rules and dialogs database218 is described in conjunction with FIG. 3. The heuristic rules anddialogs database 218 stores rules and dialogs data structures thatautomate responses to received social media messages. The dialogs datastructures control the interaction between the dialog core 210 and thesocial media network 112, 114, and/or 116. The dialogs or heuristicrules can be created by a dialog creator 220. Thus, the dialog creator220 can interface with user input 226 to receive information aboutdialogs. The user input 226 is then used to form the states andresponses for a dialog data structure.

An agent interface 224 is a communication system operable to send actionitems to contact center agents 228, in the contact center 102. An agentcan be a person or other system that is operable to respond to certainquestions or requests from a customer. For example, the agent 228 can bea person that has specialized expertise in a topic area, such astechnical support. The agent interface 224 can format the social messageinto an action item and forward that message to one or more agents 228.The agent interface 224 can also receive response(s) back from theagents 228. The information provided by the agent 228 may be used by thedialog core 210 to complete a response to the social media message. Forexample, the information may classify the social media message (e.g.,sales, service, etc.). In other embodiments, the response is a completeresponse to the social media message that can be posted to the socialmedia network 112, 114, and/or 116.

An embodiment of a dialog data structure 300 is shown in FIG. 3. Thedialog data structure 300 can be stored in several different forms ofdatabases, such as relational databases, flat files, object-orienteddatabases, etc. Thus, while the term ^(data) field” or “segment” is usedherein, the data may be stored in an object, an attribute of an object,or some other form of data structure. Further, the dialog data structure300 can be stored, retrieved, sent, or received during the processing ofdialogs by the dialog core 210 or the dialog creator 220. The dialogdata structure 300 stores one or more items of information in one ormore segments. The numeric identifiers (e.g. 302, 304, etc.) shown inFIG. 3 can identify, the one or more segments.

The dialog data structure 300 can include one or more input segments,such as, input segment 1 302 and input segment 2 304, a rules segment306, and/or a dialog script segment 308. Input segments 302 and 304 eachinclude one or more inputs that may be required to associate a socialmedia message with the dialog data structure 300. The inputs segments302 and 304 may include a customer identity, a respective customer type,a text word, a phrase, or other information that indicates that thedialog data structure 300 is associated with or pertaining to the socialmedia messages.

The input segments 302 and 304 may also include certain trends that thetrend analysis component 212 can identify. As such, if a trend isidentified and associated with the inputs 302 and/or 304, the dialogdata structure 300 can be retrieved and used by the dialog core 210.While there are only two input segments 302 and 304 shown in FIG. 3,there may be more or fewer input segments associated with the dialogdata structure 300, as indicated by ellipses 310.

The rules segment 306 can include one or more heuristic rules thateither help with the association of the respective dialog data structure300 with the social media message or control the interaction between thedialog core 210 and the social media customer. For example, the rule 306can state that the dialog data structure 300 applies only if the socialmedia message includes input segment 1 302 but not input segment 2 304.One skilled in the art will be able to identify other types of rulesthat may govern the association of the dialog data structure 300 withthe social media message. In other embodiments, the rules segment 306states that if the social media message includes inputs 302 and/or 304,then the dialog core 210 should respond with a certain type of action.

Generally, a dialog script segment 308 includes a script of actions orresponses that direct one or more other components, such as the dialogcore 210 (FIG. 2B), to conduct actions or send the responses. The dialogscript segment 308 can include the one or more states and correspondingresponses or actions required by the dialog core 210. If the dialogscript segment 308 applies (that is, if the social media message isrequesting a certain type of information), the dialog script segment 308may include the one or more responses that the dialog core 210 shouldcommunicate to respond to that social media message. The dialog scriptsegment 308 can also include a response and a pointer to another dialogscript segment 308 or another dialog data structure 300. Further, thedialog script segment 308 may have one or more actions that may be takenby another component after a secondary response is received by acustomer. Thus, the dialog script segment 308 can direct or instruct aninteraction to continue with a social media user over a period of timeand over several interactions between the user and the contact center102.

It should be noted that the dialog script segment 308 can reference oneor more other dialog data structures 300. Thus, the dialog scriptsegment 308 can direct the dialog core 210 to reference at least oneother dialog data structure 300 to further act on the social mediamessage. Further, the social media message can be subject of two or moredialog script segments 308, and direct the dialog core 210 to completetwo dialog script segments 308 on the social media message. Also, dialogscript segments 308 may not be associated with a response but direct thedialog core 210 to complete other actions, such as populating databasesor gathering information. A Social Media Manager (“SMM”) dialog engineand associated dialog scripts/programs may play a role in identificationof a trend and in modifications to ASR grammars used by the dialogengine for the IVR and/or ASR systems, along with associated dialogscripts/programs. The SMM dialog script/application may receive anindication that a new trend has been identified or an old trend retired.The SMM dialog engine may then extract vocabulary associated with thenew trend or old trend, with assistance of the text analysis engine, andrequest an update to the IVR dialog script/application and/or ASR engineto include or remove the vocabulary identified with the trend. Inanother embodiment, the SMM dialog may post the information and contextto a separate module that would determine the proper insertion orremoval of the identified vocabulary.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention are able to monitorand gather social media data items (e.g., Tweets, Facebook posts, blogentries, etc.). The social media data items are processed by recognizinginformation, extracting information and/or categorizing information. Theprocessed information is then imported into the contact center as workitems to be further processed and/or analyzed by automated agents or bylive agents. The resulting analyzed social media data has manyapplications as a dynamic data source.

Social media monitoring and analysis is used to detect trending topics,sentiment spikes, and other events interesting to an enterprises contactcenter. With this information, the invention dynamically adjusts IVRgrammars, call flows, and prompts for callers during the duration of thedetected event. Adjustments may also include changing weights associatedwith potential matches to items in a lexicon, adding items to thelexicon, and/or deleting items from the lexicon. ASR weighting is alsoadjusted to influence speech recognition results and routing ofspeech-based self service applications.

Public social sources may include the following: Twitter, Facebook.Linkedln, YouTube, Blogs, RSS, search sites (Google, Bing, etc.), etc.Any site where users may post information about themselves or commentabout current events and make that information available for socialnetworking purposes may be used as a source of social information.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention include acontinuously running social media monitoring system that looks forcharacteristics such as trends, new topics, and sentimental spikes. Thissystem will monitor all sites configured. Interactions are monitoringand processed in real-time, producing up to the minute analysis of thestate of the configured topics. Furthermore, any unknown topic,sentiment, or trend items are noted and produce similar notifications.The analysis may include a combination of standard methods in cloudbased services and internal created analysis of characteristicsincluding text processing, part of speech analysis, languageidentification, classification methods, location-based information,time-based information, etc.

Topics may be configured depending upon the monitored social mediachannels. For example, in Twitter the social media gateway may beconfigured by the user to search for a set of terms, e.g., an airlinemight put in their airline name, initials (Delta™, DL), and terms like“flight”, “ticket”, “plane”, “tarmac”, etc. An SMM may allow a user toestablish a context of when those words are relevant and when they arenot relevant. To illustrate, “Delta” may also be associated with DeltaFaucets™, a college fraternity or sorority, a river delta, and so forth.The context of a potentially ambiguous search term like “Delta” isestablish by selecting a set of related terms that must appear with asearch term before a hit of the search term is considered to berelevant. For example, for the search term “Delta,” the system may beconfigured to search for related terms like “airline”, “flight”,“ticket” in context with “Delta” to distinguish tweets on airline topicsfrom other topic domains.

An SMM may also have an ability to receive @mention and direct messagetype tweets. An @mention is a type of tweet that contain text such as“@<twitterhandle>,” where the <twitterhandle>is the name of another useron twitter. For example, Delta Airlines may establish a twitter handle“DeltaAssist” to allow customers to communicate with Delta social mediaassociates. Direct message tweets are a non-public person-to-personcommunications channel that Twitter supports for users that arefollowers of each other. For both @mention and direct message tweets,the social media message is specifically addressed to the company, sotopic configuration should not be necessary because such tweets areassumed to be “on-topic.” For other social media channels (e.g.,Facebook, Linked-In), the company may establish a “page” as an anchorpoint for conversations. The content of the conversations on that pageare assumed to be on the topics related to the company because, e.g.,one typically would not post a message about Delta Faucets on the DeltaAirlines Facebook page. Spam filters may also be useful in ensuring thatposts are on-topic.

The notification interactions are configured to trigger action by thecontact center IVR/ASR systems. The action may include an initialreconfiguration of the IVR/ASR systems, and/or provisioning a durationof the reconfiguration, and/or provisioning that the reconfiguration isintended to be of indefinite duration, and/or the notifying a user ofunforeseen triggers or states. For example, a power outage event may bedesigned or set up to trigger an action that will last until the actionis manually reset. In another example, a generic service disruption mayhave a duration of, e.g., 60 minutes after an end of a trend isdetected, or 60 minutes after a sentiment spike has returned to normallevels.

An aspect of the invention is the handling of unknown events, such asunanticipated critical service events that may occur. Monitoring socialchannels may provide notification of these events before traditionalincoming channel calls are affected by these critical service events.Critical service events may trigger certain actions. First, the IVR/ASRsystem may be notified of an unknown service event, triggering somedefault processing in response. Second, a notification trigger may besent to notify an appropriate workflow chain to analyze and deal withthe new event. This may include manual changes to the IVR/ASR systems,both in monitoring and in the contact center.

For example, if a weather event or natural disaster occurs (e.g., atornado outbreak; an earthquake; a volcanic ash eruption, etc.), theremay be unanticipated travel disruption throughout a region. Earlynotification through social channels would provide early warning of anincreased call volume to come.

Once an IVR/ASR system has received the notification information, thesystem may dynamically adjust its user interface, byadding/deleting/changing available options, menus, prompts, grammarprocessing, workflow (i.e., the sequence in which a work item is handledin a contact center), or adding/deleting entries in an ASR lexicon,etc., in order to accommodate the events as detected from the changingsocial state, i.e., from changes in social information posted on socialnetworking sites. For example, the notifications may affect a singleprompt, may cause a change in order of individual menu items within alist, may cause new menu item to be added to accommodate the new event,and so forth. In addition, the system may be configured to activate anentire dialog module that replaces or augments large parts of theresponse/routing system. In another embodiment in accordance with thepresent invention, only back end routing parameters are changed with nodifference visible to the caller. Back end routing parameters may referto data that a work flow engine or underlying call routing/handlingswitch may use to make an assignment of a call to a specific resource(e.g., contact center agent, IVR, etc.) within a contact center. Forexample, a trend might place callers with “volcano” issues into adifferent queue than they might have gone into based on their CRMdemographic. Work flows use data to make routing determinations, and thedata used for those routing decisions may be modified by an identifiedtrend.

An ASR engine may also receive the notification information, and maydynamically change weights associated with candidate matches (i.e.,candidate matching words or phrases) to detected speech. Speechrecognition often operates based upon a list of probable results.Current events, events and trends deduced or inferred from social mediachanges the probability that certain words would be spoken. Embodimentsin accordance with the present invention may use the notificationinformation to adjust or weight up or down the probability of match of aspoken word to a word in an ASR dictionary.

For example, suppose it is known through social media channels thatthere exists a condition such as a snowstorm in a major city. Wordsassociated with a snowstorm or its effects may temporarily become morecommon. For example, callers to a travel reservation calling center mayspeak certain words more often, such as “change reservation” or“reschedule” or “snow”, and so forth. More generally, if a list of thetop “n” (e.g., top three) matches to a particular spoken word isdetermined based upon a calculated correlation (or other method formatching), and the list is presented in descending percentage of match,all without the benefit of social media information, then a match may beselected which is not necessarily the best match as long as it is withina predetermined percentage of the best match, and as long as theselected match further positively correlates with a word mined from thesocial media channel.

Alternatively, the data mined from the social media information may beused to adjust (e.g., boost up or down) the calculated correlation,weighting, or other method for matching the spoken word, to produce acombined weighting. The selected word would then be selected as the topmatch based on the combined weighting.

An ASR system in accordance with an embodiment of the present inventionmay provide greater control by the system over the prompt and responseinteractions with a user. The system may provide an adaptable platformthat provides flexibility in response to data mined from social mediasources, or in response to voice responses from users. For example, in auser-initiative dialogue ASR system, a user calling in may be providedwith an open-ended greeting when the call is answered by the ASR system,such as “How may I help you?” A lexicon used to recognize utterances(e.g., speech) from users may be augmented, or a supplemental lexiconmay be modified and used together with a core lexicon, to add wordsrelated to topics whose interest and usage is trending higher in socialmedia channels.

Additions to a lexicon recognized based upon data mining of social mediachannels may attempt to estimate persistence of the newly recognizedwords and phrases. For example, low persistence words and phrases suchas those related to a transient and low-recurring event or phenomenon(e.g., weather event, earthquake, volcanic ash, etc.) may be expected tooccur less frequently as the transient phenomenon changes from being apresent event to being a historical event. However, high persistencewords and phrases such as those related to a non-transient or permanent(e.g., renaming of an airport) or high-recurring event (e.g., trafficjams, etc.) that may be expected to be encountered in the future, evenif presently the frequency of usage of those words and phrases maydecline below a predetermined threshold, or even if a certain amount oftime has passed. Such high persistence words and phrases may be retainedin the lexicon in order to reduce mismatches during a startup ortraining period if those words and phrases start trending higher again.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a socialmedia engine that monitors social media channels for subject matter inthe domain of interest, e.g., air traffic, for words and phrases relatedto the domain of interest, such as trips, etc., in order to find outwhether there are new topics, and therefore new vocabularies that arebeing used by the public which may be added to a lexicon used by the ASRsystem.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention may also adjustweighting factors for words and phrases that are related to topics datamined from social media channels. For example, if the word “volcano” orphrase “volcanic ash” or “ash cloud” is detected more frequently insocial media channels, then an embodiment of a system may add to thelexicon, or provide greater weighting to, related words and phrases suchas “rebook”, “reservations”, “flight delays”, “hotel”, “weatherforecast”, and so forth. When such words and phrases are encountered,the actions taken by some embodiments may be to map actions to existingoptions in the ASR system. In other embodiments, new routing branches inthe ASR system may be added (or removed) to handle changes in the typesof inquiries based upon the trend of topics data-mined from social mediachannels.

Embodiments may adjust a recognition grammar. Recognition grammar is aset of word patterns that informs an ASR system what to expect a humanto say. Embodiments add words and phrases to the recognition grammarbased upon social media channels, and may also later remove or reducethe weighting in the recognition grammar of the added words and phrasesas their usage in social media channels declines.

Embodiments may analyze a structure of the words and phrases detectedfrom social media channels. For example, detecting the words “ash” and“volcanic” in isolation in the social media channels is a result thathas a certain level of importance and may trigger a relatively minorchange in the response of the ASR system. However, detecting a morespecific phrase such as “volcanic ash” may trigger a relatively greaterchange in the response of the ASR system because it is more specific andtherefore deemed to be of a higher level of importance. When users whouse more specific phrases are more likely to refer to a known kind ofevent, and may therefore trigger a more specific change in the responseof the ASR system. Therefore, there are at least two aspects to what canbe learned from the line of social media channel data trends. First, thegrammar aspects, i.e., the structure of ASR, may be changed in responseto the social media channel data. Second, new words and phrases areadded to the lexicon.

As a condition triggering the change in the response of the ASR systemebbs or is ameliorated, the weighting adjustment can be lessened. Ashaped sliding window (e.g., bell curve, hamming window, triangular,etc.) may be useful for calculating a magnitude of time-based changes tothe weighting adjustment. In some embodiments, words or terms added to alexicon which are not expected to be permanent additions may be removedonce their usage in social media channels has fallen below apredetermined threshold for at least a predetermined length of time.Once the condition has essentially passed, normal ASR operation wouldresume.

FIG. 4 illustrates a method 400 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. At step 402, an utterance is received from a user orthe user's telephone. Method 400 may assume that the utterancerepresents speech signals from the user rather than other noises (e.g.,coughing, clearing throat, whistling, background noises, touch tones,etc.). In parallel at step 404, social network feeds are monitoredsubstantially continuously. At step 406, the social network feeds aredata-mined for words and phrases. Calculations based upon the minedwords and phrases may also be performed, such as trending analysis, timewindowing, etc. At step 408, a lexicon is updated with any new words orphrases that should be added to the lexicon. The lexicon may also beupdated in step 408 to remove non-core words or phrases that werepreviously added but can now be deleted. Updates to the lexicon may bemade, for example, by either editing a single lexicon or (if there isboth a core lexicon and a supplemental lexicon) by editing thesupplemental lexicon.

At step 410, an ASR engine matches the speech signals received in step402 to words from the lexicon as updated in step 408, in order toproduce a list of one or more candidate matches. The list of candidatematches may further have associated with each candidate match a score,percentage, or other indicator of a goodness of fit (generically, a“score”) of the speech signals received in step 402 to each of thematching words and/or phrases from the updated lexicon. At step 412, thelist of matching words or phrases may be adjusted based upon the resultsof words and phrases data-mined in step 406. For example, if thematching words and/or phrases include a score, the score may be adjustedup or down, or the ranking of matching words or phrases within the listmay be otherwise adjusted. If the score of a matching word and/or phrasefrom step 406 is within a predetermined limit of a score of a nexthigher matching word and/or phrase from the core lexicon, the rank orderof the matching word and/or phrase from step 406 may be promoted higher.

At step 414, a best match is picked from the adjusted list of matchingwords calculated from step 412.

FIG. 5 illustrates a block diagram of a computing environment 500 thatmay function as servers, computers, or other systems provided herein.The environment 500 includes one or more user computers 505, 510, and515. The user computers 505, 510, and 515 may be general purposepersonal computers (including, merely by way of example, personalcomputers, and/or laptop computers running various versions of MicrosoftCorp.'s Windows™ and/or Apple Corp.'s Macintosh™ operating systems)and/or workstation computers running any of a variety ofcommercially-available UNIX™ or UNIX-like operating systems. These usercomputers 505, 510, 515 may also have any of a variety of applications,including for example, database client and/or server applications, andweb browser applications. Alternatively, the user computers 505, 510,and 515 may be any other electronic device, such as a thin-clientcomputer, Internet-enabled mobile telephone, and/or personal digitalassistant, capable of communicating via a network 520 and/or displayingand navigating web pages or other types of electronic documents.Although the exemplary computer environment 500 is shown with three usercomputers, any number of user computers may be supported.

Environment 500 further includes a network 520. The network 520 may canbe any type of network familiar to those skilled in the art that cansupport data communications using any of a variety ofcommercially-available protocols, including without limitation SIP,TCP/IP, SNA, IPX, AppleTalk, and the like. Merely by way of example, thenetwork 520 maybe a local area network (“LAN”), such as an Ethernetnetwork, a Token-Ring network and/or the like; a wide-area network; avirtual network, including without limitation a virtual private network(“VPN”); the Internet; an intranet; an extranet; a public switchedtelephone network (“PSTN”); an infra-red network; a wireless network(e.g., a network operating under any of the IEEE 802.11 suite ofprotocols, the Bluetooth™ protocol known in the art, and/or any otherwireless protocol); and/or any combination of these and/or othernetworks.

The system may also include one or more server 525, 530. In thisexample, server 525 is shown as a web server and server 530 is shown asan application server. The web server 525, which may be used to processrequests for web pages or other electronic documents from user computers505, 510, and 515. The web server 525 can be running an operating systemincluding any of those discussed above, as well as anycommercially-available server operating systems. The web server 525 canalso run a variety of server applications, including SIP servers, HTTPservers, FTP servers, CGI servers, database servers, Java servers, andthe like. In some instances, the web server 525 may publish operationsavailable operations as one or more web services.

The environment 500 may also include one or more file and or/applicationservers 530, which can, in addition to an operating system, include oneor more applications accessible by a client running on one or more ofthe user computers 505, 510, 515. The server(s) 530 and/or 525 may beone or more general purpose computers capable of executing programs orscripts in response to the user computers 505, 510 and 515. As oneexample, the server 530, 525 may execute one or more web applications.The web application may be implemented as one or more scripts orprograms written in any programming language, such as Java™, C, C#™, orC++, and/or any scripting language, such as Perl, Python, or TCL, aswell as combinations of any programming/scripting languages. Theapplication server(s) 530 may also include database servers, includingwithout limitation those commercially available from Oracle, Microsoft,Sybase™, IBM™ and the like, which can process requests from databaseclients running on a user computer 505.

The web pages created by the server 525 and/or 530 may be forwarded to auser computer 505 via a web (file) server 525, 530. Similarly, the webserver 525 may be able to receive web page requests, web servicesinvocations, and/or input data from a user computer 505 and can forwardthe web page requests and/or input data to the web (application) server530. In further embodiments, the web server 530 may function as a fileserver. Although for ease of description, FIG. 6 illustrates a separateweb server 525 and file/application server 530, those skilled in the artwill recognize that the functions described with respect to servers 525,530 may be performed by a single server and/or a plurality ofspecialized servers, depending on implementation-specific needs andparameters. The computer systems 505, 510, and 515, web (file) server525 and/or web (application) server 530 may function as the system,devices, or components described in FIGS. 1-4.

The environment 500 may also include a database 535. The database 535may reside in a variety of locations. By way of example, database 535may reside on a storage medium local to (and/or resident in) one or moreof the computers 505, 510, 515, 525, 530. Alternatively, it may beremote from any or all of the computers 505, 510, 515, 525, 530, and incommunication (e.g., via the network 520) with one or more of these. Thedatabase 535 may reside in a storage-area network (“SAN”) familiar tothose skilled in the art. Similarly, any necessary files for performingthe functions attributed to the computers 505, 510, 515, 525, 530 may bestored locally on the respective computer and/or remotely, asappropriate. The database 535 may be a relational database, such asOracle 10i™, that is adapted to store, update, and retrieve data inresponse to SQL-formatted commands.

FIG. 6 illustrates one embodiment of a computer system 600 upon whichthe servers, computers, or other systems or components described hereinmay be deployed or executed. The computer system 600 is shown comprisinghardware elements that may be electrically coupled via a bus 655. Thehardware elements may include one or more central processing units(CPUs) 605; one or more input devices 610 (e.g., a mouse, a keyboard,etc.); and one or more output devices 615 (e.g., a display device, aprinter, etc.). The computer system 600 may also include one or morestorage devices 620. By way of example, storage device(s) 620 may bedisk drives, optical storage devices, solid-state storage devices suchas a random access memory (“RAM”) and/or a read-only memory (“ROM”),which can be programmable, flash-updateable and/or the like.

The computer system 600 may additionally include a computer-readablestorage media reader 625; a communications system 630 (e.g., a modem, anetwork card (wireless or wired), an infra-red communication device,etc.); and working memory 640, which may include RAM and ROM devices asdescribed above. The computer system 600 may also include a processingacceleration unit 635, which can include a DSP, a special-purposeprocessor, and/or the like.

The computer-readable storage media reader 625 can further be connectedto a computer-readable storage medium, together (and, optionally, incombination with storage device(s) 620) comprehensively representingremote, local, fixed, and/or removable storage devices plus storagemedia for temporarily and/or more permanently containingcomputer-readable information. The communications system 630 may permitdata to be exchanged with the network 520 (FIG. 5) and/or any othercomputer described above with respect to the computer system 600.Moreover, as disclosed herein, the term “storage medium” may representone or more devices for storing data, including read only memory (ROM),random access memory (RAM), magnetic RAM, core memory, magnetic diskstorage mediums, optical storage mediums, flash memory devices and/orother machine readable mediums for storing information.

The computer system 600 may also comprise software elements, shown asbeing currently located within a working memory 640, including anoperating system 645 and/or other code 650. It should be appreciatedthat alternate embodiments of a computer system 600 may have numerousvariations from that described above. For example, customized hardwaremight also be used and/or particular elements might be implemented inhardware, software (including portable software, such as applets), orboth. Further, connection to other computing devices such as networkinput/output devices may be employed.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention system may bedirected to chat and/or IM dialog via a system-directed structureddialog. For such embodiments, trend terms may be mapped into existingcall flow paths in the IVR and/or ASR application by the methodspresented herein.

In the foregoing description, for the purposes of illustration, methodswere described in a particular order. It should be appreciated that inalternate embodiments, the methods may be performed in a different orderthan that described. It should also be appreciated that the methodsdescribed above may be performed by hardware components or may beembodied in sequences of machine-executable instructions, which may beused to cause a machine, such as a general-purpose or special-purposeprocessor or logic circuits programmed with the instructions to performthe methods. These machine-executable instructions may be stored on oneor more machine readable mediums, such as CD-ROMs or other type ofoptical disks, floppy diskettes, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, magneticor optical cards, flash memory, or other types of machine-readablemediums suitable for storing electronic instructions. Alternatively, themethods may be performed by a combination of hardware and software.

Specific details were given in the description to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the embodiments. However, it will be understood by oneof ordinary skill in the art that the embodiments may be practicedwithout these specific details. For example, circuits may be shown inblock diagrams in order not to obscure the embodiments in unnecessarydetail. In other instances, well-known circuits, processes, algorithms,structures, and techniques may be shown without unnecessary detail inorder to avoid obscuring the embodiments.

Also, it is noted that the embodiments were described as a process whichis depicted as a flowchart, a flow diagram, a data flow diagram, astructure diagram, or a block diagram. Although a flowchart may describethe operations as a sequential process, many of the operations can beperformed in parallel or concurrently. In addition, the order of theoperations may be re-arranged. A process is terminated when itsoperations are completed, but could have additional steps not includedin the figure. A process may correspond to a method, a function, aprocedure, a subroutine, a subprogram, etc. When a process correspondsto a function, its termination corresponds to a return of the functionto the calling function or the main function.

Furthermore, embodiments may be implemented by hardware, software,firmware, middleware, microcode, hardware description languages, or anycombination thereof. When implemented in software, firmware, middlewareor microcode, the program code or code segments to perform the necessarytasks may be stored in a machine readable medium such as storage medium.A processor(s) may perform the necessary tasks. A code segment mayrepresent a procedure, a function, a subprogram, a program, a routine, asubroutine, a module, a software package, a class, or any combination ofinstructions, data structures, or program statements. A code segment maybe coupled to another code segment or a hardware circuit by passingand/or receiving information, data, arguments, parameters, or memorycontents. Information, arguments, parameters, data, etc. may be passed,forwarded, or transmitted via any suitable means including memorysharing, message passing, token passing, network transmission, etc.

While the foregoing is directed to embodiments of the present invention,other and further embodiments of the present invention may be devisedwithout departing from the basic scope thereof. It is understood thatvarious embodiments described herein may be utilized in combination withany other embodiment described, without departing from the scopecontained herein. Further, the foregoing description is not intended tobe exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed.Modifications and variations are possible in light of the aboveteachings or may be acquired from practice of the invention. Certainexemplary embodiments may be identified by use of an open-ended listthat includes wording to indicate that the list items are representativeof the embodiments and that the list is not intended to represent aclosed list exclusive of further embodiments. Such wording may include“e.g.,” “etc.,” “such as,” “for example,” “and so forth,” “and thelike,” etc., and other wording as will be apparent from the surroundingcontext.

Moreover, the claims should not be read as limited to the describedorder or elements unless stated to that effect. In addition, use of theterm “means” in any claim is intended to invoke 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶6, andany claim without the word “means” is not so intended.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method to adjust an automatic speechrecognition (ASR) engine, comprising: receiving social networkinformation from a social network; data mining the social networkinformation to extract one or more characteristics; inferring a trendfrom the extracted one or more characteristics; and adjusting the ASRengine based upon the inferred trend.
 2. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: receiving a speech signal from a user; and recognizing thespeech signal by use of the adjusted ASR engine.
 3. The method of claim2, wherein recognizing the speech signal further comprises: producing alist of candidate matching words; and ranking the list of candidatematching words by use of the inferred trend.
 4. The method of claim 1,wherein adjusting the ASR engine comprises changing a routing path. 5.The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the ASR engine compriseschanging a speech recognition weighting.
 6. The method of claim 1,wherein adjusting the ASR engine comprises modifying a lexicon used bythe ASR engine.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the ASRengine comprises adjusting a recognition grammar used by the ASR engine.8. The method of claim 1, wherein the ASR engine is adjusted in responseto a specificity of the one or more characteristics.
 9. The method ofclaim 1, wherein an adjustment to the ASR engine has a limited duration.10. The method of claim 9, further comprising the step of calculating amagnitude of the adjustment to the ASR engine based upon a shapedsliding window.
 11. The method of claim 9, further comprising:estimating a persistence of the trend; and limiting the duration of theadjustment to the ASR engine based upon the estimated persistence. 12.The method of claim 1, wherein the step of data mining is performedwithin a domain of interest of the ASR engine.
 13. A system to adjust anautomatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, comprising: a receiverconfigured to receive social network information from a social network;a processor configured to data mine the social network information toextract one or more characteristics; a module configured to infer atrend from the extracted one or more characteristics; and an adjustmentmodule configured to adjust the ASR engine based upon the inferredtrend.
 14. The system of claim 13, further comprising: a receiverconfigured to receive a speech signal from a user, wherein the speechsignal is recognized by use of the adjusted ASR engine.
 15. The systemof claim 13, further comprising a calculation module configured tocalculate a magnitude of an adjustment to the ASR engine based upon ashaped sliding window.
 16. The system of claim 13, further comprising anestimation module configured to estimate a persistence of the trend andto limit a duration of the adjustment to the ASR engine based upon theestimated persistence.
 17. The system of claim 13, wherein the ASRengine is configurable to change a speech recognition weighting.
 18. Thesystem of claim 13, wherein adjusting the ASR engine is configurable tomodify a lexicon used by the ASR engine.
 19. The system of claim 13,wherein adjusting the ASR engine is configurable to adjust a recognitiongrammar used by the ASR engine.
 20. The system of claim 13, wherein theASR engine is configurable in response to a specificity of the one ormore characteristics.